


the hearts that whisper on our sleeves

by QuickYoke



Series: to the devil in his own way [3]
Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types, Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crossover, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-26
Updated: 2017-04-26
Packaged: 2018-10-24 04:36:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10734243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuickYoke/pseuds/QuickYoke
Summary: If Evie were being honest, returning to England was the last thing on her mind. Post Jack the Ripper, set in Karnaca. A sort of sequel to Evie's "Headhunter" character study.





	the hearts that whisper on our sleeves

 

On the horizon the great cleft mountain cast its shadow over Karnaca, its craggy face gilded in moonlight, its sweeping vales festooned with wind turbines that creaked in the distance, a slow steady moan accompanied by the wash of the ocean across the bloodied flensing docks of the Campo Seta. In the blink of an eye and a flash of liquid shadow, Emily stood on the rooftop opposite, a knife-dark silhouette against a backdrop of mist-veiled chimney stacks. Evie sighed. _‘Scouting ahead’_ Emily called it. _‘Showing off_ ’ more like.

Taking a few steps back, Evie gathered herself before sprinting forward and leaping from the top of the building and onto the next. Just barely she caught herself on a stone outcropping over a windowsill. Her ribs slammed against the building’s façade, knocking the wind from her. Evie grunted. She tried to shake the effect off, but remained breathless even as she hauled herself to the roof a few meters above her, where Emily peered down at her like a curious cat. She did not offer Evie a hand – a small mercy; Evie’s pride needed no injury as well.

When she finally managed to clamber to the roof, Emily squatted down on her haunches beside her. “How are you doing, grandmother?”

“I told you not to call me that,” Evie growled. She pushed herself upright and winced when her knees twinged in complaint. Once she was an expert at this sort of leaping about. Nowadays she was long in the tooth and would need a much-deserved soak in a salt bath to drain away a night’s adventures.

Emily watched her with a playful, restrained grin. “I thought that only counted when we were having s -”

“Also yes!” Evie cut Emily off before she could finish. She cursed her British primness and the twice-damned Templar artefact that had landed her here in the first place. _Take a vacation, Evie!_ Jacob had insisted. _You’ve just hunted down London’s most brutal murderer, and to be honest I’m worried for you; I saw what you did to Jack’s body._

Evie’s idea of a vacation however, had seemed to involve hunting down more pieces of Eden and accidentally getting herself transported through space and time to an Empire that resembled England at first glance, but most definitely was not England. The next time she saw a glowing crystal skull, she was going to let someone else pick it up, thank you very much.  

Stalking away, Evie shrugged off the memory of Jack. His voice still whispered beyond the grave, the way Emily’s still beating heart did in her hands, affixed with bone charms and a forge-hot gauge. _What a pretty little bird you’ve found for yourself, Miss Frye. What a meal she’ll make, baked, live, into a pie. What would she taste like with all that killing she’s done? Oh, but I forgot – you already know._

Evie shook her head free of him, and he faded with a laugh and a murmur among the drones of the bloodfly infested apartment beneath her feet. “What are we even doing here?” she asked, more sharply than she had intended. Closing her eyes, taking a deep breath, Evie said, “Forgive me. I am not myself this evening.”

Emily watched her with an odd, soft expression in her gaze. Jessamine’s heart twitched in one of her hands; Evie shuddered to think what secrets of hers it told, what wild unspoken confessions. With a smile, Emily tucked the heart away and stepped forward to speak low in her ear. “Can’t an empress take her lover out for a romantic moonlit stroll?”

They were of a height with one another with Emily standing a few fingers taller, and it galled, oh how it rankled. Evie was used to being tall for a woman, and yet a slip of a girl barely into adulthood looked down at her. This close, Emily could tilt her head and kiss her. Worse still, Evie would allow it. Had allowed it. Lord help her, but she was weak-willed, a creature of passions and furies. Jack knew it. Emily knew it. Emily even seemed to like it – very much in fact, if their romantic liaisons these last few weeks were indication enough.

“Can you rightly call yourself an empress with Delilah running amok?” Evie could not help but needle. Normally Jacob bore the brunt of it, but now with him a world away there was only Emily. Well – there was Meagan Foster, but Meagan didn’t look at her with fetching exasperation the way Emily did. Meagan only glowered and pinned another knife through the picture of Luca Abele on her corkboard.

The corners of Emily’s mouth turned down at the thought of her usurper. Evie swayed forward to kiss those corners upright once more, but stopped herself just short. It wouldn’t do to kiss an empress atop a building for any to see, even shrouded in mist and moonlight. Frantic ruts in deserted dust-lined alleys and slow luxurious delights in the bunks aboard the Dreadful Wale were one thing, but this wouldn’t do.

Before she could move away, Emily pulled her in close. Hands at the back of her neck and the small of her waist; one of Emily’s palms always seared hot and bright with its black-etched mark. Emily’s mouth a demanding pressure against her own. Evie stifled a note of surprise in the back of her throat, then gripped Emily’s hips, holding them flush together. Emily only parted after a long indulgent moment, and the force of her gaze was firm, sharp.

“I am an empress – throne or no throne.” Her voice was steel awash in velvet, commanding and unyielding, though Evie knew how easily Emily bent to her touch in private.

Swallowing past the heat that lodged itself in her jaws, Evie said, “I am aware. You aren’t the first empress whose acquaintance I’ve made.”

Emily looked at her with a piercing and grave expression, rather than the levity Evie had expected. “I promised I would get you back to your world, and I meant it. That skull you were found unconscious with – if I had known, I would have tracked it down when I came to rescue you from the Duke’s prisons.”

“ _Rescue me?”_ Evie prodded Emily in the sternum. “Need I remind you that I was halfway out the door when you arrived on the scene?”

Emily smiled – _God, she has a terribly devilish smile_ – and reached up to take Evie’s hand in her own, linking their fingers together like woven strands. “How could I forget? You’d left a trail of bodies in your wake the likes of which I rarely see outside my family’s handiwork.” She kissed Evie’s hand, and through the pale silk glove Evie’s skin burned. “But for now, let us enjoy our time together.”

“And I suppose this romantic excursion has nothing at all to do with those men down there?” Reluctant, Evie stepped out of Emily’s arms, unentwining their fingers. To hide her pained expression she tugged her hood over her head, casting her face in shadow. Evie crouched at the edge of the building over a pillar, counting the steps of the many guardsmen below, noting their weapons, their whiskey-bleary eyes, the Duke’s colours emblazoned across their clothes, the repositories of whale oil glowing softly against a far corner beside a wall of light that emitted intermittent crackles of thunder. She fondled the handle of the pistol tucked away beneath her sash, eyeing the whale oil. So many ways to dispatch a few unsavoury cretins. So little time.

“Think of it this way,” Emily lifted her gold-stitched scarf so that it covered the lower half of her face. The heart was gone and in its place her fist clenched with a seething black void. Her eyes glinted, wine-dark and rich. “The sooner we finish here, the sooner I can join you in that bath you’re thinking of having.”

At the thought – obscene, electric, and instantaneous – Evie gave a delicate clearing of her throat. She would have to buy the heart a gift; it was the only possible explanation as to how Emily knew about the bath. What did disembodied hearts desire? Perhaps the offering of a fine cigar. She had heard the late Jessamine Kaldwin was fond of cigars. Without hesitation Evie pulled out the pistol, and its silvered detailing gleamed almost as sharply as her wolfish smile. “Well then, what are we waiting for?”

Emily laughed, a soft somehow lurid sound, and her blade folded from her hands with a silent hiss. “Always so eager for the kill. I love that about you.”

Evie froze. She stared up at Emily, who seemed not to have heard the words she’d spoken. Careless, reckless, entirely in her element, Emily dropped from the rooftop and onto three unsuspecting guardsmen, who in sprays of blood and gurgling cries fell dead to the ground. Taking the form of a shadow that clawed its way along the cobblestones, Emily wreaked havoc far below and Evie watched from a distance. Like witnessing a forest fire up close – bold, bright, and untameable. With a rueful shake of her head, Evie dropped down to join the carnage, firing at the whale oil during her descent, exultant in the blast that sent four men careening. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Emily thrust her blade through a man’s jaw. Baring her teeth in a feral grin, Evie aimed her pistol at two guards rushing towards her and fired. She would be lying if she said only the young wore their hearts on their sleeves.  

 

**Author's Note:**

> “I incline to Cain's heresy," he used to say quaintly: "I let my brother go to the devil in his own way.” - Robert Louis Stevenson, the Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde


End file.
